The ORIGINAL gathering place for a merry band of Three Percenters. (As denounced by Bill Clinton on CNN!)

Sunday, June 19, 2016

The Blow Out Kit

As you may already know, I am finishing up week one of my two week Reserve Annual Training. The first week was spent with the normal mundane housekeeping stuff that we have not had time to complete. If you think that you have it bad with the occasional but, nonetheless, obtrusive corporate HR training requirements, you have not seen what the Army is forced to sit through with the quarterly gauntlet of mind rotting, tax payer subsidized, power point slides and online courses. Not to make light of the epidemic of veteran suicides, but after you have sat through your hundredth session of quarterly sexual harassment or master resiliency training, hanging yourself by your own safety reflective belt just for a diversion seems pretty attractive.

One thing of note, however, is that I took a refresher Combat Lifesavers course and it gave me the inspiration to publish a series of posts relating directly to the immediate life saving actions that you need to take after an active shooter incident. This will be coming from the meathead perspective of the military, but you can easily adapt them to your situation, whatever first responder role that may be. This will be another easily digestible, slow burn of posts that describe what you can do at a very basic level as a first responder of an active shooting incident or explosion. Surprisingly, it is actually quite a lot.

"Legal Disclaimer" up front
One caveat is that these actions can be performed by anyone that has the approved hands on training. The skill illustrated on this blog are for educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as the same thing as real world training. This does not give you the qualifications to perform emergency medical treatment any more than watching Scooby Do makes you a private investigator. It would be a good idea to read on your local or state interpretation of the Good Samaritan laws before you get yourself in a situation a high priced lawyer cannot get you out of.

The Stuff

First things first, we need to cover the very modest equipment that you need to provide this care. On every Soldier's armor, you will find the Individual First Aid Kit (IFAK). Please reference the picture below or you can go to this link for the pdf.

That is the "stuff" for one person's individual kit. You may want to have a larger first responder bag that can handle more than one incident/victim. The IFAK will get you out of most trouble given that you can get to a hospital in a decent amount of time. It will not treat heart attacks, strokes, poisonings, spine injuries, and other much more common life threatening incidents. This kit is strictly for the aftermath of gunshot wounds, blunt trauma, compound fractures, and other life threatening but treatable incidents that are common to the battlefield.

I would caution you to keep your boo-boo kit separate from your blow out kit. You will not want your band aids and Imodium to become jumbled in with the actual life saving materials. Every tool has its place. I would also encourage you to have at least two CAT tourniquets either in or attached to your Go Bag or directly attached to your gear/rifle. Whatever's clever for you.

Also, if you are a III Percent vendor that sells any of the equipment listed above, shoot me an email (not the Georgemason, but the Sipeystreet account), and would be more than happy to link to your products.

Just put my first IFAK together...LONG overdue. You can buy a lot of this stuff on Amazon for decent prices....JFYI and build your own kit. Also if you have a vacuum sealer kit, you can "shrink wrap" and compress a lot of bandages (dollar store usually has rolls of gauze on the cheap) into a small brick.

The answer is because it is what the Army uses. I cannot give you the science behind the use of that particular drug. It is just a cocktail of an anti-inflammatory, pain reliever, and antibiotic that is given. From what I gather from speaking with the semi-professionals, the pill pack is never available to be given out. It is still doctrine to administer the pack to patients before they are sent on their way, but it just never done because no one ever seems to have it.

As it appplies to non-perscription holders, I would think that the normal "around the counter" drugs like fish cipro and amoxicillin, have their own reactions with the other drugs. My limited biology training is insufficient to give you an answer either way, but perhaps a carefully worded conversation with your pharmacist could satisfy that curiosity.

Good stuff for people to have, but I'm not really sure I want someone with little to no medical training poking a needle between my ribs to re-inflate a lung. Also, if the NPA kits don't include surgical lube (ours in the civilian EMS world don't) then it should be included separately. NPA's don't go in very nicely dry, if at all. We love the CAT tourniquets, and several major bleeding emergency calls have been mitigated with their use. The best part is the ability to apply it to yourself if necessary.

Stay safe at Summer Camp. I forgot about the spending time going over wills, financial planning, and family crap. You have "Death by Power Point", but I was old school with overhead projector slides, blackboards, and paper handouts.

To the high priced lawyer drama....I know this much. If a person is hurt, possibly dying, it doesn't matter to me what legislated legalese exists or doesn't exist. My conscience and my soul and my first principles matter to me. I will what pi am able to help save at life and if I am sued into oblivion for that, then so be it. I certainly won't just stand idle and watch, or worse yet just watch someone die, without trying to save a life.

Defending myself, whether it be in the moment from an aggressor by use of arms or setting on a stand in a courtroom explaining my actions, is something that I live by. I will stand down any of it, for anyone.

Some call that stupid but you know what? To me, not doing so is what is so pathetically stupid. Not doing so is conceding birthright.

To the high priced lawyer drama....I know this much. If a person is hurt, possibly dying, it doesn't matter to me what legislated legalese exists or doesn't exist. My conscience and my soul and my first principles matter to me. I will what pi am able to help save at life and if I am sued into oblivion for that, then so be it. I certainly won't just stand idle and watch, or worse yet just watch someone die, without trying to save a life.

Defending myself, whether it be in the moment from an aggressor by use of arms or setting on a stand in a courtroom explaining my actions, is something that I live by. I will stand down any of it, for anyone.

Some call that stupid but you know what? To me, not doing so is what is so pathetically stupid. Not doing so is conceding birthright.

Mike, i appreciate your commonsense attention to these kinds of useful posts. Its too bad the detractors to your posts miss the point that for them being very useful info, its over the heads of those with no training to use it, nor an inclination to get trained to use them. Thanks again for another time and productive post.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.